Benjamin Franklin: Renaissance Man of the Colonial Era

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin was an important person who played a major role in the history of STEM. He possessed many qualities which helped him in becoming a successful scientist, inventor, writer, a diplomat, and a Founding Father. Nowadays he is most commonly known as the scientist who "discovered electricity".

Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Massachusetts Bay Colony, today known as Boston. He was the son of Josiah Franklin and Abiah Folger. Benjamin Franklin was Josiah's fifteenth child, out of 17 children that his father had. Ben learned to read at a very young age. He went to school at Boston Latin School until he was the age of 10 when his dad made him work full-time at his cash strapped father's candle and soap shop. Unfortunately, he didn’t

Later they adopted a kid named William and had a baby, Francis, who was born in 1732, but eventually died at the age of four of smallpox. The couple's only daughter, Sarah, was born in 1743.

Franklin's success grew during the 1730s, for it used new forecasts, astronomical information, poetry, and many different types of writings. Around the 1740s, Franklin's interests in innovations and scientific pursuits grew. He even wrote a pamphlet "A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge" which served as the founding document of the American Philosophical Society, the first scientific group of people in the colonies. This drew him into entrepreneurship with the invention of the Franklin stove.

Franklin invented the Franklin stove, in 1742, which is a metal-lined fireplace that stands in the middle of a room. This would provide more heat and less smoke, unlike a fireplace, and it used less wood. It had rear baffles for improved airflow, helping the heat radiation from the middle of the room to all directions and it had metal walls which would help it absorb heat and use it longer after the fire went